Was Apple outright rejecting apps that use Dropbox because of competition with iCloud?

Is Apple blanket-rejecting iOS apps that make use of Dropbox because of an evil plan to push developers toward iCloud? If you asked this question five days ago, the answer from the Internet at large might have been a resounding "yes!" But days later, as is often the case, details have come out that reveal the answer is probably "no."

As it turns out, Dropbox inadvertently put other developers using its SDK in violation of one of Apple's app guidelines, resulting in a string of rejections that looked as if apps using Dropbox were being banned. The Web flew into a fury over what is essentially an annoying but long-standing clause in Apple's guidelines. The problem has now been remedied and the fury has died down, but what, exactly, happened during this sordid drama and how did it end up being fixed?

"Apple is rejecting apps using Dropbox!"

A thread in the Dropbox forums began just under a week ago with several app makers reporting that Apple rejected their apps due to an issue with Dropbox. Their apps had made use of the Dropbox SDK. When users set up this feature for the first time, they are directed to Safari where they're prompted to authenticate their Dropbox accounts for use with the app in question. This functionality was required by Dropbox's latest SDK at the time, and app makers were left confused as to who was really responsible for their app rejections. Most people blamed Apple.

It eventually came out that the rejections were apparently due to the fact that users could click through to Dropbox's main website while they were busy authenticating through Safari. This could lead them to an account sign-up page and could lead to them paying Dropbox money for storage. And the reason Apple doesn't want that? In its own roundabout way, the ability for Dropbox to potentially bring in revenue without going through Apple's in-app purchasing mechanism is a violation of Apple's guidelines:

Apps that link to external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in the app, such as a “buy” button that goes to a web site to purchase a digital book, will be rejected

This is the same guideline that has led to Amazon's Kindle app—plus a plethora of others—removing links to outside content stores where customers can purchase content outside of Apple's system. Customers can still purchase content outside of Apple's system, but Apple doesn't want them to be able to get there (directly, anyway) via the iOS app itself. "We have not changed our developer terms or guidelines," Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller told Ars in February of 2011. "We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase."

Indeed, this guideline has been around for years, and has been actively enforced for some types of apps for more than a year. A violation is a violation, but that doesn't make it user-friendly at all. For the Kindle and other reading apps, the removal of any store links (and refusal to add in-app stores) makes the process of obtaining new content quite convoluted on the user end. And in the case of apps that use Dropbox, the situation was even more of a reach—the apps themselves didn't link to a way for users to create accounts to buy Dropbox storage at all. The app only used the Web for Dropbox authentication, and the Web page in question had the potential to lead users there.

Already patched

Apple did not respond to our repeated requests for comment, but did confirm to All Things D that the above guideline was indeed what Dropbox's SDK had violated. Once Dropbox figured out the issue, it was quick to update its iOS SDK so that there would be no links available for users to click around and make their way to an account creation page. Functionally, the crisis was over.

But Dropbox still defended itself. The company argued that although its own app makes use of Apple's in-app purchasing mechanism, it's not possible for Dropbox to offer that ability to other app-makers through its own SDK. Basically, it can't allow third parties to include an in-app way for users to sign up for paid Dropbox accounts. "Apple requires paid services that allow account creation to offer the option to upgrade via In-App Purchase (IAP)," a Dropbox spokesperson told All Things D. "We abide by this policy in our app, where we offer upgrades only via IAP. However, we are unable to offer IAP in our SDK to third-party developers due to limitations of IAP. Additionally, our SDK allows only free accounts to be created from third-party apps and has never been used to promote our paid plans."

As of Thursday, several developers making use of the updated Dropbox SDK are still waiting for approval on the App Store after re-submission. (We have heard that the average approval times on the App Store have dropped to 3-5 business days recently, down from about a week. Still, it may take a few more days for those apps to make their way through the process.) But the thread in the Dropbox forum has begun to devolve into a debate over whether Apple specifically targeted Dropbox because of its services that seem to compete with iCloud.

"I can't believe it took that many posts for someone to mention iCloud. It's very obvious that Apple are just protecting iCloud," one user wrote.

"This term in their developer docs (11.13) has been there for AGES and they have been enforcing it more and more over the past 2-3 months," another user responded. "I've had the same, identical rejection for apps which work in spaces that Apple would never have reason to enter (small business accounting!?). I had to work around it in the same way—don't link to external sites, and if I do, don't have them contain links to anything with a signup page. Saying it's an attack on DB because of iCloud is FUD/BS/Redherring."

Considering Apple's past enforcement of the same guideline on numerous other apps, it doesn't seem as if Apple was acting maliciously against Dropbox in particular. Apple has, however, faced issues with inconsistently enforced guidelines in the past. This incident only highlights some of the frustrating challenges developers face when it comes to the App Store. It's sometimes hard to know whether something you're doing—or something the SDK you're using is doing—will land you in hot water and cause a ruckus in the tech press.

50 Reader Comments

This story shows how absolutely ridiculous Apple's rules are. A link leading to another link, etc. causes Apple to ban a whole bunch of apps. Apple is just hurting user experience with its greed.

Furthermore, why couldn't Apple avoid the confusion by warning Dropbox before apps were pulled? Dropbox would have had a fix in a day and nobody would have been inconvenienced (beyond the inconvenience that Apple forces). Now devs have to resubmit their apps and wait who knows long for Apple to get back around to approving them. Apple is non-communicative to the point of insanity.

The app only used the Web for Dropbox authentication, and the Web page in question had the potential to lead users there.

Make an authentication only web page, no links going anywhere else. But technically, anything that opens a browser is in violation because that browser can lead to some site where something might be bought and not give Apple its cut.

This story shows how absolutely ridiculous Apple's rules are. A link leading to another link, etc. causes Apple to ban a whole bunch of apps. Apple is just hurting user experience with its greed.

Furthermore, why couldn't Apple avoid the confusion by warning Dropbox before apps were pulled? Dropbox would have had a fix in a day and nobody would have been inconvenienced (beyond the inconvenience that Apple forces). Now devs have to resubmit their apps and wait who knows long for Apple to get back around to approving them. Apple is non-communicative to the point of insanity.

While I tend to agree that rejecting (not banning) an app for links to links to links is a bit much, you have to understand it from Apple's viewpoint. It would be a major hassle to warn and then try to follow up on developers to fix their apps. It's easier to just reject it and have them resubmit.

Also, I've seen countless apps that have an authentication jump where the end user never sees the actually site, just a prompt for account login or creation and a quick flip back to the app. This is an easy workaround that Dropbox seems to have implemented now.

Could Apple have warned them prior? Sure, but Dropbox could have looked at the process beforehand with a bit of scrutiny and prevented this as well.

This was pretty ridiculous, even for Apple. Basically, if you link to a site that has any kind of e-commerce that could compete with Apple, even if it's difficult to get to and has nothing to do with what you're sending the user there to do, you're violating their policies? Nice.

Dropbox should have just dropped iPOS support. Once major developers start leaving, so will customers, and Apple will be forced to change its policies or die out. Of course that won't happen because the "free market" is a complete joke in modern times.

This story shows how absolutely ridiculous Apple's rules are. A link leading to another link, etc. causes Apple to ban a whole bunch of apps. Apple is just hurting user experience with its greed.

Amen! Apple is trying to heighten the walls around its garden even more.

Not necessarily a bad thing.

If we want to complain about app store policies, these issues that get resolved without any disruption to users aren't the priority. Let's look at apps like OnLive, which have been held up in the queue indefinitely and which are looking pretty much dead in the water.

This dropbox rejection is a simple misstep, fairly routine.

The really sticky issues are the ones that bother me. The ones with no clear violation of the rules, that get stuck in limbo as a result. That's where users and developers alike suffer.

High wall, walled garden, fine with me. Thinking you're clear to enter the garden, but being left to rot at the gate, that's what sucks.

Dropbox should have just dropped iPOS support. Once major developers start leaving, so will customers, and Apple will be forced to change its policies or die out.

Of course that won't happen because the "free market" is a complete joke in modern times.

Free market is exactly the key. Do you know how many accounts they get from their SDK alone (never mind their app)? I alone easily get them 100 new accounts per day. And they should give that up just to leave space for someone else to swoop in?

But in what way did this "kerfuffle" end? So far no app has been approved with the "patched" version. And from the developer reports, being able to create an account or logging in through the browser was cited as reasons to get rejected. That's not something that has been patched away so far.

The problem is the original rule is dumb. Apple could easily require that apps that have subscriptions outside the App Store are only valid for items that can be accessed via the web, and those apps must be paid apps.

Instead, just to be stubborn to their original rule, they make NO money from the free apps, and they make the user experience worse.

The problem is the original rule is dumb. Apple could easily require that apps that have subscriptions outside the App Store are only valid for items that can be accessed via the web, and those apps must be paid apps.

Instead, just to be stubborn to their original rule, they make NO money from the free apps, and they make the user experience worse.

Stupid stupid.

Wait, your solution is to require such apps to be paid? Fuck that!

I'll take a free app that simply removes signup links to third-party paid services any day.

No, Apple wants a cut of paid service upgrades purchased or linked to from iOS apps.

The most interesting thing about the article to me is that Dropbox is perfectly willing to pay Apple's tariff for service upgrades purchased through their own app--which implies that Dropbox thinks that the ability to sell service upgrades via its own iOS app is worth what Apple charges. They would like to be able to extend this capability (Apple toll and all) to non-Dropbox apps that use the Dropbox SDK. This would be of benefit to both Apple and Dropbox--Apple just does not yet provide a way for Dropbox to do this.

It would be a major hassle to warn and then try to follow up on developers to fix their apps. It's easier to just reject it and have them resubmit.

Go bring me a rock from outside. Nope, not that one. Go bring me another one. Reject it with no reason... where would you start looking for the problem in your app?

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Could Apple have warned them prior? Sure, but Dropbox could have looked at the process beforehand with a bit of scrutiny and prevented this as well.

From the way I read it, the web page it directed the user to didn't have anything offending on it. It was that you could go to a page that went to a page that... (dunno how deep) that would eventually let you get to a page that let you purchase/subscribe. I guess anything that points to any search engine is right out, as well.

Seriously, though. I think its common knowledge by now that Apple's policies regarding application approval process are at least -somewhat- ridiculous at times (if not all the time, depending on your opinion and experience). Apple could easily improve the program, but they don't, and iOS is still the best mobile application distribution method, so developers still make the compromise of playing by Apple's ridiculous rules.

If major developers wanted to change this, they could jump ship from iOS, but a ton of eager business people would jump in and fill the gap due to the staggering amounts of money that could be made. Its the strikers vs scabs conundrum.

Realistically, it'd be nice if major developers (such as Dropbox) got together and just asked Apple for a better means of communication or some sort of trusted developers program, something, anything, that would smooth over major services like dropbox suddenly vanishing with no warning. Hell, they could even charge an extra 10 bucks (or whatever) for it--get a warning email a week before your app is booted, citing what rules are violated.

The current system works, but not well, and I daresay Apple has made its reputation and success on things performing better than the bare minimum.

The most interesting thing about the article to me is that Dropbox is perfectly willing to pay Apple's tariff for service upgrades purchased through their own app--which implies that Dropbox thinks that the ability to sell service upgrades via its own iOS app is worth what Apple charges. They would like to be able to extend this capability (Apple toll and all) to non-Dropbox apps that use the Dropbox SDK. This would be of benefit to both Apple and Dropbox--Apple just does not yet provide a way for Dropbox to do this.

They could certainly implement this for all users that have the Dropbox app installed (via custom URL scheme). New users would be asked to download the Dropbox app from the App Store, users with the Dropbox app would be automatically sent to the Dropbox app for authentication and then from the Dropbox app back to the SDK using app (FB does it that way). All in all it would most likely be a better user experience then they have now.

If Apple allowed links in apps to web sites that allowed purchases outside the app, then Apple would get zero revenue from app extras. So they don't allow it. It's a simple business decision. Adding one or two extra link-clicks does not change anything.

If a developer would rather have 100% of a smaller number instead of 85% of a larger number, that's his/her choice.

This story shows how absolutely ridiculous Apple's rules are. A link leading to another link, etc. causes Apple to ban a whole bunch of apps. Apple is just hurting user experience with its greed.

Furthermore, why couldn't Apple avoid the confusion by warning Dropbox before apps were pulled? Dropbox would have had a fix in a day and nobody would have been inconvenienced (beyond the inconvenience that Apple forces). Now devs have to resubmit their apps and wait who knows long for Apple to get back around to approving them. Apple is non-communicative to the point of insanity.

I know some still want to take this as an example of how to hate Apple in any way possible, when you say "greed" I say "having developers pay their fair share." The App store is not something that runs for free on fairy dust. It takes money to run the app store, and Apple is simply guaranteeing that people who use their app store and want to make money on their apps pay their fair share. If you want to give it away for free, great, you have this wonderful easy place to submit it so all these iOS users can search for it and get it. But you offer it for free and then go to another website and allow someone to "buy a license" or "subscribe to something" and you don't give Apple any kind of cut for running the servers that host your app? That's naughty.

Apple is also not requiring you to buy their products. You still have plenty of choices out there.

Apple's guideline is aimed at making sure that apps written to run on iOS give Apple a cut of all revenues generated from inside the app. This is fair: Apple arguably provides plenty of value for its 30%.

The new leap that Apple has taken in the Dropbox "kerfuffle" is that they have extended the no-money-except-through-us rule one step way from the application developer. To a service supplier that the developer happens to use.

This expansion of their claim is more troubling than the specious "link to a link to a link at which the user may buy something at" argument.

If Apple allowed links in apps to web sites that allowed purchases outside the app, then Apple would get zero revenue from app extras. So they don't allow it. It's a simple business decision. Adding one or two extra link-clicks does not change anything.

If a developer would rather have 100% of a smaller number instead of 85% of a larger number, that's his/her choice.

Or what every poster has missed, is that this could also be about security. By not allowing links to external purchasing sites you can control the security of the system better. I for one like the security and will put up with the trade-offs to get it.

Also I laugh when people talk about Apple being greedy. Before Apple did you ever hear of purchasing music for $0.99? Did you ever hear of purchasing software for $0.99? Was there ever a Windows Mobile software purchase for under $20?

Yep, Apple is greedy alright, charging a whole $0.99 for your beloved app and then only taking $0.33 for themselves. How dare they those greedy SOB's?!!!!!! [sarcasm] Just remember what things cost you the end user before the app store. Apple changed the world, and you all benefited from that change.

Seriously, though. I think its common knowledge by now that Apple's policies regarding application approval process are at least -somewhat- ridiculous at times (if not all the time, depending on your opinion and experience). Apple could easily improve the program, but they don't, and iOS is still the best mobile application distribution method, so developers still make the compromise of playing by Apple's ridiculous rules.

If major developers wanted to change this, they could jump ship from iOS, but a ton of eager business people would jump in and fill the gap due to the staggering amounts of money that could be made. Its the strikers vs scabs conundrum.

Realistically, it'd be nice if major developers (such as Dropbox) got together and just asked Apple for a better means of communication or some sort of trusted developers program, something, anything, that would smooth over major services like dropbox suddenly vanishing with no warning. Hell, they could even charge an extra 10 bucks (or whatever) for it--get a warning email a week before your app is booted, citing what rules are violated.

The current system works, but not well, and I daresay Apple has made its reputation and success on things performing better than the bare minimum.

The developer-side of Apple operations is beyond terrible. Far below the bare minimum. With tools that are a decade behind, a bizarre pet language that every serious developer just wraps and forgets, and OS functionality with the halflife of an LHC particle.

I've been on with a tech trying to solve an iTunes problem, and I could hear them leafing through the manual that I had on my screen. They really are a joke. The fact that any Apps get up there is more despite rather than because of Apple.

Tons of it for free, even. And even then, it's basically just the reheated shareware model... get a limited functionality version for free, pay $5 for the full version, etc. like many, many App Store apps.

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Apple changed the world, and you all benefited from that change.

Like paying 50% more for ebooks... all for the customers' benefit

pappypappy wrote:

The developer-side of Apple operations is beyond terrible. Far below the bare minimum. With tools that are a decade behind, a bizarre pet language that every serious developer just wraps and forgets, and OS functionality with the halflife of an LHC particle.

alleging they had secret agreements not to recruit each other's employees, pacts which violate antitrust laws, keep employee salaries and benefits down, and prevent organic shifts in talent between companies.

Apple's stance towards developers and engineers is as if they were indentured workers. You pay Apple for the privilege to develop software on their platforms (iOS in particular) and you pay for the privilege of selling stuff to people to run on those platforms. Macs are excluded because they are 'general purpose machines' and it's illegal for them to lock them down like they do iOS... otherwise the Mac Store would be your only choice there, too, most likely.

What I find amusing is that the App Store itself has a big "Developer Web Site" button which can lead you to go through the EXACT same process. Apple are essentially in violation of their own policy.

This is kind of silly. Apple's policy is that if you offer something for sale through your app, you pay Apple 30%, and apps that circumvent this (e.g. by linking to a web store via Safari) are not approvable. So your complaint is what? Apple is circumvent paying itself 30% of its own profits from the things it sells through its own apps?

Also I laugh when people talk about Apple being greedy. Before Apple did you ever hear of purchasing music for $0.99? Did you ever hear of purchasing software for $0.99? Was there ever a Windows Mobile software purchase for under $20?

Yep, Apple is greedy alright, charging a whole $0.99 for your beloved app and then only taking $0.33 for themselves. How dare they those greedy SOB's?!!!!!! [sarcasm] Just remember what things cost you the end user before the app store. Apple changed the world, and you all benefited from that change.

Umm...open source software, as well as a lot of closed source freeware and shareware would like to disagree with you. Music for $0.99 per track...is expensive in my opinion. When I first got an eMusic account it was $0.20 per track, they've since raised the price to .49, .69, or .79, depending on the track, and as a long time account holder, I get a 25% discount. Also, eMusic was around before iTunes, and has always been DRM free.

Apple may have popularized online music purchases by advertizing to the mass market, but they weren't the first, and they weren't the cheapest. Some of us have been happily using free (both in terms of $ and freedom) software, and buying digital music since before Apple "changed the world", and really don't like the changes they're making.

In fact, the era when Apple was nearly dead (late 90's early 00's) was a pretty nice time for computer advancement. The increasing use of mobile devices has been nice in terms of pushing power efficiency, but to me it lacks the excitement of the CPU and GPU rivalries that pushed some serious competition and drove processing power up and prices down.

As much as I dislike the MS monopoly on operating systems, it did have the nice side effect of encouraging standardization and interchangeability of hardware components, which meant that just about anyone could assemble a system that was as good or better than what you could buy pre-built from Dell, Gateway, Compaq, etc. Also, it allowed a relatively continuous upgrade path that was great for maintaining backward compatibility, and even if you switched to a different hardware vendor, your software still worked.

It was much better than the late 80's era, when you had a whole bunch of different totally incompatible systems competing (Apple, IBM PC & clones, Commodore 64/128, Amiga, Atari). The modern mobile device market seems (to me anyway) to be much more like the late 80's than the late 90's, and I don't consider that a good thing. One advantage that we have now is that there are more cross-platform toolkits to help make software run on many platforms. Apple seems to deliberately discourage the use these sorts of things on iOS, so I consider them part of the platform fragmentation problem, not part of the solution.

The developer-side of Apple operations is beyond terrible. Far below the bare minimum. With tools that are a decade behind,

LOL, I guess you haven't used Xcode recently then...

pappypappy wrote:

a bizarre pet language that every serious developer just wraps and forgets,

But a really solid API.

I use XCode every day. It is a decade behind every other IDE (that I also use every day) for serious work.

The API would benefit from (a) functionality that lasted more than an OS version, and (b) not being obfuscated by Objective C. But I am willing to accept that just because nobody else in the world considered Objective C to be a practical language doesn't make it not so... ;o)

Dropbox should have just dropped iPOS support. Once major developers start leaving, so will customers, and Apple will be forced to change its policies or die out.

Of course that won't happen because the "free market" is a complete joke in modern times.

The iOS market is the only one that makes developers any money. They don't make anywhere near the same amount of money on Android, and there's not enough people on WP7 for most developers to care. That's why they won't leave.

Dropbox should have just dropped iPOS support. Once major developers start leaving, so will customers, and Apple will be forced to change its policies or die out.

Of course that won't happen because the "free market" is a complete joke in modern times.

The iOS market is the only one that makes developers any money. They don't make anywhere near the same amount of money on Android, and there's not enough people on WP7 for most developers to care. That's why they won't leave.

Absolutely - it's just basic grade bullshit from a large organisation that has nobody attempting to improve its usefulness. But it's not really enough to drive people away from a proven market. To misuse the quote, it's an acceptable level of violence...